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Patent offices often warn the public about blatant scams such as fake payment notifications sent by third parties, but do not generally warn the public about other less-overt rip-offs or pitfalls. In many cases, practitioners that simply take a summary of an invention prepared by an inventor and…

In US patent law, during patent examination, claims are to be given the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) consistent the specification. A pair of recent decisions of the US Federal Circuit explored this principle in the context of inter partes review and ex parte…

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) recently engaged in public consultation on proposed amendments to Canada’s Patent Rules. The proposed Patent Rules, once implemented, will allow the coming-into-force of amendments to Canada’s Patent Act which, amongst other…

On the heels of its decisions relating to patentability of graphical user interfaces (previously discussed here) from late last year, the Canadian Patent Appeal Board (PAB) has provided further insight on the issue…

When an employee conceives of an invention, who owns it? The employer or the employee?
In Canada the general rule is that the employee owns his or her inventions in the absence of an agreement the contrary. Many employers address this through ensuring that employment agreements include a…

For decades, Schlumberger Canada Ltd v Canada (Commissioner of Patents), [1981] 56 CPR (2d) 204 (FCA), was the only Canadian decision on computer-implemented inventions. In that case, the court upheld the Commissioner’s rejection of an invention implemented by way of software. The Federal…

In recent weeks Canadian courts have been busy issuing patent-related decisions and patent filers should take notice of some interesting developments which may enhance the appeal of Canada as a filing jurisdiction.
Two decisions which were released to the public in the last two weeks make…

Provisional patent applications (PPAs) are often filed as part of a patent portfolio filing strategy. A PPA is not a regular patent application. A PPA will not be examined by any patent office and will not result in a granted patent. PPAs are unique to the United States patent regime. For example,…

In Canada, as in many other jurisdictions, a patent application is only examined upon request. To avoid abandonment of an application, a request for examination must be made within five years of the filing date of the application. Applications are generally examined sequentially according to the order…

Most people are familiar with the principle that if you publicly disclose your invention you might lose your right to seek patent protection for that invention. Canada, the U.S. and a handful of other countries provide a bit of a grace period, but in general people try to ensure that they file a patent…

The Canadian federal government released its 2017 budget on March 22, 2017. It was billed in pre-budget leaks as the “innovation” budget. Since coming to power in 2015, the current Liberal government has been fond of using the word “innovation” as often as possible in its policy statements and marketing. …

Every day brings a new flurry of articles about FinTech (“financial technology”) startups and their potential to be disruptive forces. Traditional banking and financial industry players are said to be at great risk. However, many of them have seen this coming and are preparing to defend their turf.…

In the United States, “[e]ach individual associated with the filing and prosecution of a patent application … [has] a duty to disclose to the Office all information known to that individual to be material to patentability” (see e.g., 37 CFR 1.56, 1.97, 1.98). Prior art is filed with the United States…

Like many companies and inventors, you might choose to forego patent protection and instead rely upon trade secret protection. There are some wrinkles to trade secret protection that should be kept in mind when making that choice.
Trade secret is a perfectly legitimate approach to consider,…

This is often the first question we get from prospective clients.
There is no question that writing and filing a patent application – properly – is expensive. Anyone that explores the possibility of seeking patent protection should be realistic about the timelines and the cost. The preparation…

Over the past few years, IP has been in the spotlight south of the border. It seems that not a day goes by without a patent, trade-mark or copyright story in the popular press (e.g. see smartphone wars). Changes in the law have also been coming at a fast pace. Witness the US implementation…

2013 saw the release of four Commissioner’s Decisions (Patent Appeal Board cases) that offer a glimpse of how the Amazon.com, Inc. v. Canada decision of the Federal Court of Appeal is being applied by the Canadian patent office. The decisions largely turn upon claim construction. If the…

The Federal Court of Appeal recently released a split decision on the issue of anticipation through prior use of an invention. The majority affirmed the trial-court decision that the public must simply have the theoretical opportunity to access the prior art invention in order to constitute an anticipatory…

Twitter is being lauded for its “revolutionary” Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), on the basis that it purports to “put ownership of patents back in the hands of the inventors”. But what does it actually do?
Twitter posted the IPA recently

It used to be common practice to include an “object clause” in a patent specification to clearly set out an over-arching objective of the invention. Many granted patents have multiple object clauses, setting out a number of goals for the invention. This practice died away as patent drafters came…